the skin i live in
by The Lady Avaritia
Summary: The world you live in isn't real and death is the only way out. During the genjutsu battle against Itachi, Sasuke is trapped in limbo, and cannot get out without help. What's more, he doesn't want to get out. Not when he can live in a world where he can be happy with his niisan forever. Meanwhile in the real world Itachi has to find a way to get Sasuke's mind back into his body.
1. Chapter 1

**Dear readers, I know that some of you have been wondering if I am alive or dead, but this year I have struggled a lot with my writing, personal issues and school drama. However, I am glad to have returned among you. For those who are unfamiliar with my style, I hope that with this work I will pull you in. **

**This is an Inception-based (but not really) AU, which I hope you will enjoy. Pairing for the story are still undecided. Casual incest, will only be briefly hinted at, in a way that you can ignore, or chalk off to general madness. With that being said, I welcome your input in all cases.**

**~Lady**

**Please enjoy the first chapter of:**

the skin I live in

Chapter One: Structural Formula

It's his fault, Itachi thinks. Ultimately, it's all his fault as things generally tend to be. He can't be very sure exactly when he lost Sasuke, at which level his younger brother disappeared. He should've paid more attention. He should've been a lot more careful. But he was so proud, so happy and proud that Sasuke had improved so much and grown so strong. He should've known better than to create one genjutsu after the other in concentric circles. He got careless and carried away, because he thought Sasuke could match him, going down level after level. A nine-level genjutsu, shared creation by two users each one of which created a new level, or at least a part of level. Most users could only follow though to level three or such. Kakashi had lasted until the fourth, before his mind dropped in limbo, though if Itachi hadn't used the Mangekyo, his opponent would've probably lasted longer… He can't be sure at which level he lost Sasuke, though. Maybe it was the fourth, which Sasuke generated, or further down, around the sixth or seventh, both of which Itachi made himself, but then again… no. It's pointless to wonder now.

-x-

Sasuke washes up on some shore, but it's a familiar muddy shore covered sparsely with worn out dusty patches of grass – the shore of the Nakano river on the side of the Uchiha property. The river splashes its murky waters lazily, swishing like a skilled but tired dancer, as the cold drops lick at the brown muddy ground. Sasuke hauls himself up and stands in the middle of where he's stranded. He is… home. The coppery sky above him tells him that it's around dinnertime, and he's somehow washed up ashore, some fifty feet away from the little pier where his father showed him the trademark Uchiha jutsu all those years ago. His clothes are heavy and stick wetly to his body. He is chilled to the bone with cold. He looks around him. There isn't a single light in the entire compound. He hears a brief rustling noise and quickly turns to it, a slender dark figure quickly filling up his line of vision.

"What," asks a familiar deep voice, "are you doing here?" Sasuke blinks wearily and looks at Itachi's furious face.

-x-

Sasuke's body is heavy in his arms as he walks decisively, while his mind sharply and clearly replays each moment of their fight in his head. Four? Or… no, it was definitely afterwards. Sasuke started fading at maybe six, or seven. The ones that were entirely Itachi-generated. So. So he's fallen in limbo. At six. Or seven. Physical disturbance won't bring his mind back. Itachi knows. Itachi knows how limbo works. He spent years locked in there, while he explored the properties of the Mangekyo. He built from memory. Recreated the Uchiha compound and all of Konoha, and populated it with the people he'd loved and slain, and he'd lived there with them the way he was supposed to, and he'd grown old, just like he'd wanted to. He'd married, he'd had children. He'd lived the life he could never have had, and then, when the persistent truth of the illusion became too much to bear, he returned to the living world with a gasp and tears staining his paper thin cheeks. He's replayed the massacre to wake himself up, and remind himself that this life would never be reality.

He'd gasped and opened his eyes, the Sharingan pattern spinning furiously, and Kisame shooting him a confused look over the campfire.

"Did you have a nightmare? You were trashing in your sleep."

-x-

When a genjutsu is shared between users and one falls in limbo, generally, the blankness of limbo is filled with what is left from the users of the group who were last there.

-x-

"What are you doing here?" Itachi demands angrily. "There's nothing for you here! You ought to leave!"

"Where… is here?" Sasuke asks, a little confused, because this is home, but home for him is nowhere.

"This is home," Itachi says impatiently. "This is the home that's waiting for you, but you shouldn't be here. Leave!"

"Why?" Sasuke insists. "Go away why? If this is home and you are here, why on earth would I want to leave?"

There is something at the back of his head. The persistent nagging feeling that there is something wrong with the whole picture, that he's forgetting something vital and important, something absolutely crucial… He takes a look at Itachi's heartbreakingly beautiful face, the sharp chisel of his cheekbones, the graceful slopes of his eyebrows, the perfect curve of his lips… He shakes his head. Of course he should be here. Where else would he be?

-x-

Itachi got out of limbo on his own, through sheer determination. Kakashi got help from Tsunade, who'd given him a powerful enough physical kick to wake him. Sasuke… would also need help. He had a weak, fickle mind and Itachi knew well how attractive the elusive world of limbo could be. How quickly one could become addicted to it, to the power of pure creation that came with it, to the ability to manipulate the very fabric of reality. He remembers rolling green hills, picnics by the Nakano, treats cooked by Mikoto, banter with members of the police force, a bright cheerful wedding under the sakura trees, children with his face, and a wife that was a third cousin twice removed, and Shisui being inappropriate at his stag party. Things that never happened anywhere but in his own mind. Things that hurt all the same – his children growing up and leaving and getting married to have children of their own, the passing away of his parents from old age… But there was always the reminder, the best reminder he could've made, the trigger that would make his mind snap and keep him in check, and constantly assert the fact that none of this is real – there was no Sasuke. Itachi wasn't aging, and Sasuke wasn't there, and he replayed the massacre, did everything all over again and remembered….

_The world you live in isn't real and death is the only way out._

He'd gasped and opened his eyes, the Sharingan pattern spinning furiously, and Kisame shooting him a confused look over the campfire.

"Did you have a nightmare? You were trashing in your sleep for the last couple of hours."

"I was gone years," Itachi wants to say, but doesn't.

He needs to get Sasuke to Konoha, to Tsunade and Kurenai and Kakashi, people who can give Sasuke the kick, external or internal. He'd turn himself in, he'd face a death sentence... if only they'd wake Sasuke up.

-x-

It's a warm endless summer. The meadows roll, iridescent and beautiful, the air smells sweetly. Sasuke and Itachi walk the streets of the district hand in hand. Itachi had a pleasant serene expression on his pretty sharp face, his eyes half-closed. His palm is warm and dry in Sasuke's. The half-ruined houses stare at them with their barred windows, ramshackle ghosts still splattered with blood after some horrific event Sasuke can't quite remember. He never thinks to ask Itachi why is it just the two of them, why is there blood all over the place, why are there chalk outlines on the floors and bones in the gardens, where is the rest of the clan, where do the tomatoes come from… He never thinks to ask.

Itachi is nibbling on dango, and there is sweet sauce on the corner of his mouth. Sasuke leans and kisses it away. Itachi smiles gently at him, and messes his hair.

-x-

Itachi reaches the Konoha gate ad stops to take a breath. Sasuke's body warm and heavy in his arms.

**Here's to clarify for those confused: the Itachi that Sasuke is seeing is a projection of Sasuke's own mind – he is the part of Sasuke's mind that realizes Sasuke is in an illusion, and remembers the massacre. **


	2. Chapter 2

A good illusion is al about the big picture. It feels real when you're in it, and it's only when you're out that you realize something was wrong. So a good illusion is also about the details. The little things.

_(Like the spill of inky black locks on a down feather pillow, like the shy caress of a dusty sunray over the thin paper-pale lips you so love to kiss, like the exquisite jut of the sharpest ivory hipbone you have seen…) _

It comes down to the little things, always, and mot always in a good way, and if Sasuke had to say, he'd say that he hates illusions, because it always comes down to them, and Itachi's lips don't taste quite right beneath his, dry and chapped and bloody

(but there is something _stale_ about the blood, something _old_)

Itachi's hands are thin, pretty much just fragile bone covered in paper-thin skin, and the carpals threaten to break though it. All of Itachi seems to be made out of that rough frail paper that seems to rest like an unbearable burden over his bones, as if he can't bear the burden of carrying his own body. Some days it feels as if the sunlight is passing though him, though the fine delicate map of blue veins, like ink that's faded with time over the paper.

Sasuke is sitting at the kitchen table, peeling a tomato, because there are bumps on the skin and he does not like that. It doesn't taste right. These days nothing tastes right, so he peels everything.

Itachi is making tea. Always with the tea, it's like he never eats anything else, and when Sasuke kisses him, he tastes like the bitter leaves, as if they have somehow become embedded in his teeth.

"Do you want some tea, otouto?" Itachi turns around and smiles, and his smile looks like a bruise on his face, and he looks like he might shatter, and his dull eyes have crinkled.

"Yes," Sasuke says hoarsely, even though he hates tea and the way the bitterness clings to his teeth and the back of his throat like something he's forgotten.

Itachi bruises himself again and turns around, and then with ginger movements brings the pot and two cups to the table and awkwardly folds his thin body into a sitting position. He's gotten thinner, almost like he's melting away. Red tomato juice like blood trickles down Sasuke's chin, and Itachi moves forward to capture it with his feverish lips, and there is something wrongwrongwrongWRONG that Sasuke can't put his finger on, but this is Itachi and he is kissing him, and so Sasuke kisses right back, and wraps his arms around him, and buries his hands in his hair, and ignores the fact that he's left with an entire whisp of shiny silky black hair in his hand when he pulls away.

Itachi's eyes are dull and smiling, and lighter than they used to be.

Itachi arches beneath him, his pale hands flutter over Sasuke's muscled back, the graceful arches of his ribs press against Sasuke's chest, and his lips part. There is poetry nestled in the curves of his eyebrows, and some sort of bitter art in the mess of dark hair spilled on the pillow, as his supple legs wrap around Sasuke's waist. He throws his head back, baring his neck, which is already covered in bruises in black and blue and purple and all the other shades of love's vicious flowers (the skills of an unskillful lover, Itachi would say later) , and when Sasuke kisses the sharp edge of his collarbone and nearly cuts his lips, Itachi whispers to him softly "Otouto, you need to stop. Otouto, you need to let me go."

Sometimes Itachi would freeze up, staring at nothing with blank dull eyes, his back perfectly straight, his hands clasped in his lap appropriately. His lovely face would look like a painting, and this is when Sasuke is hurt the most, because he can see the maggots nesting right beneath the skin, and the greenish black thick tears that slowly run down Itachi's swallow cheeks in a slow painful pilgrimage from the corner of his tired eyes to die perched on the corner of his blue lips.

Itachi rarely leaves the bed, these days, but the way he makes love to the cup of tea with his lips is enough to set Sasuke reeling with need. Itachi is so fragile beneath his hands, as if he might fall apart to dust, and even the faintest light brings dark sweet tears of blood from the corners of his opaque eyes. He is feverish, complains that he is cold all the time, and so Sasuke spends is days in the bed, sharing body warmth and kissing his closed lids, blowing away the dust settling in the small curves of Itachi's thick long eyelashes.

"Otouto," Itachi whispers weakly when he is nearly delirious, "Otouto you have to stop. Please, just let me go."

Sasuke shakes his head and chalks it off to the fever, and brings the cup of black thick tea to Itachi's lips.

"Please… Sasuke."

Itachi's hands rest on the bed cover. He has the most exquisitely beautiful hand Sasuke has ever seen, with their long delicate fingers, and soft gentle palms. Hands made for holding books, not knives, hands meant to caress not kill. Itachi has the hands of a scholar or a lover, marred by the scars of a warrior, and there is something tragically beautiful in that as well. Sasuke touches the dry thin skin, kisses the scarred inside of a thin bony wrist, right over a weak thick pulse that seems to choke him down.

"It's time you let the old wounds heal, otouto. it's time you let me go."

Itachi has called him in the study, which is their father's old study, covered in dust and cobwebs. Sasuke walks though the empty compound. It's just them, him and his niisan, the two orphans in the huge empty place. Some doors hang off their hinges, some floorboards are stained with blood, and in some rooms the chalk outlines of embracing bodies are visible still, beneath the dust, but the darkness and morbid stagnation of death and decay in this place have never really bothered Sasuke.

Itachi is seated behind father's desk, and his face is obscured in darkness, but his pearl white hands are clasped atop the table, and seem to give off an iridescent glow. Sasuke is transfixed by the little blue veins. He wants to take the hands in his and kiss them. Wants to fall on his knees and worship them, and sacrifice a thousand sinners to absolve them of all wrongs.

"Sasuke, we need to talk," he says, and his voice is a little raspy, whish Sasuke chalks off to his sickness.

"Niisan?"

"Sasuke, you are hurting yourself."  
"No I'm not."  
Itachi ignores him.

"You need to leave here. You need to leave me. There is so much more to the world than what's behind these walls… so much more. Sasuke, you have to let me go."

"No, NO! I've heard you say things like that before, and things to rival them, but I won't leave you, iI'm not leaving you, Niisan, you are sick and you need me, and…"

"Sasuke, I'm dead," Itachi interrupts, hard cold and unforgiving. This is the price of being loved by a man who hates lies as he hates himself. "I'm dead," he says softly, gentler this time. The chalk-pale hands are trembling. "And you need to stop doing this to yourself. You need to let go. There are your friends who love you."

"I don't care. I love you."  
"Fool's gold, Sasuke. All that glitters is not always it, but it is right now. You gain nothing from staying here. I am dead. Dead. You can't help me. It's coward's vanity to think that you are being of use to anyone by indulging yourself and staying here."

He leans forward and his face seems to swim out of the darkness, horrible and beautiful all the same, with his empty eye sockets crawling with maggots, the lovely outlines rotting from the inside out, spilling around the pearly glow of pretty bones.

Sasuke shakes his head.

"No," he repeats, "I've seen you do this before, and I've heard you say things – things like that and things to rival them when you try to convince me that I should leave, so you'll be better off… I won't. I won't ever leave you, niisan. I will kiss the rot off of the corner of your lips, and I will hold your bones to my chest, until you take shape again and let me forget once more…"

Itachi shook his head very slowly and deliberately, and locks of dark hair fell out.

"Sasuke," he said sadly, "you need to leave."

A good illusion is al about the big picture. It feels real when you're in it, and it's only when you're out that you realize something was wrong. So a good illusion is also about the details. The little things.

_(Like the taste of black tea on soft dry lips, and the curve of a wrinkled dusty eyelid over the dead unseeing eye beneath, and the sensation of hands clutching desperately at your back in the heat of passion..) _

It comes down to the little things, always, and not always in a good way, and if Sasuke had to say, he'd say that he hates illusions, because it always comes down to them, and Itachi's lips never tasted quite right beneath his, dry and chapped and _stale_.


End file.
